Henry Waxman hands off the torch

Waxman was part of a post-Watergate freshman class that energized the House. | AP Photo

Waxman fit to be sure, but the older New Deal side of his liberal Jewish upbringing ran deep. He was still cheering rival Adlai Stevenson — backed by Eleanor Roosevelt — at the Los Angeles convention at which John F. Kennedy won the nomination in 1960. And the title of his 2009 book, “The Waxman Report,” is his tribute to an activist uncle who for years ran a community newspaper, commonly called “The Waxman Reporter,” on Los Angeles’s west side.

“The class of ’74 came in as a reform class in reaction to two things,” Waxman said. “A seniority system where chairs got there solely by seniority and often became autocratic and acted contrary to where the majority of Democrats wanted to go. … The second reform that we emphasized was the balance between the executive and legislative branch, the balance between the president and the Congress.”

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Waxman won a seat on what was then called the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee but whose mandate — on health issues — had expanded at the expense of the Ways and Means panel.

As a freshman, he quickly became part of a struggle that stripped then-Commerce Chairman Harley Staggers (D-W.Va.) of his investigations subcommittee as well as control over the full panel’s budget. It took seven ballots, after six ended in 14-14 ties, and leading the charge were Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and the late Rep. John Moss, a Democrat from Waxman’s home state.

Staggers would never recover from his wounds, going home in 1980 and leaving Dingell as the full chairman. But in that same window, Waxman also secured the chairmanship of the Health and Environment subcommittee, which became his chief wheelhouse until he ousted Dingell himself after the 2008 elections.

The residue of that Dingell-Waxman fight is such that the Michigan Democrat refused any comment last week on Waxman’s retirement. But the earlier 1979 contest — in which Waxman narrowly won the health chairmanship at the expense of then-Rep. Richardson Preyer (D-N.C.) — was more telling, in fact.

Waxman could not have won without the help of the newcomers who followed his own 1974 class in 1976 and 1978 — Democrats like Al Gore (D-Tenn.), the future vice president. And by steering campaign money to other young Democrats on the committee, Waxman was better able to isolate Preyer, a highly respected former federal judge but someone also tied to tobacco interests and a family fortune that included stock holdings in drug companies.

Waxman’s aggressive use of campaign money was a carryover from his days in the California Legislature. But more striking was how he built individual relationships with Gore, for example, who, like Preyer, was from a tobacco state. A few years later, Gore would help again when he and Waxman were seeking to block a major patent-protection bill that the pharmaceutical industry was on the verge of pushing through Congress weeks before the 1982 elections.

“Henry and I hit it off right away when I joined the Commerce Committee. … He’s really a gem,” Gore said. And in an interview, the former vice president quickly warmed to the memories of the patent fight when he was still a young member of the House.

Most important was Gore’s relationship with then House Rules Committee Chairman Richard Bolling (D-Mo.), who gave Gore an audience and agreed to block a rule for the bill unless the drug companies came forward with patent information the industry had refused to provide Gore and Waxman.

“Dick Bolling was a giant,” Gore said. “The industry and their allies were just completely astonished that their logrolling had come to a screeching halt, but they knew that Dick Bolling — once he made up his mind on a matter of principle — was not going to be moved.”

Proponents then tried to go around Rules by calling the measure up under “suspension” procedures that limited debate but required a two-thirds majority. But on a 250-132 vote, it fell five votes short after Gore and Waxman worked the House doors and swung enough votes to doom action for that Congress. “That was a great battle,” Gore said.

This fabric of personal relationships is almost impossible to imagine in today’s Congress, where the Rules Committee is a virtual wing of the speaker’s office.

In fact, Bolling had little patience for Waxman, having sharply criticized his use of campaign money against Preyer. But Bolling’s shared ties with Gore and his Southern pro-civil rights family history made all the difference. “Al Gore was one of Bolling’s favorites,” Waxman recalls. “They came from the South, they were pro-civil rights, they were liberal in the way they were liberal. He had a paternalistic feeling toward Al Gore, and Al Gore went and beseeched him not to give a rule out.”

“As a result of that bill not passing, we came back next year and said. ‘Let’s negotiate,’” Waxman said. Again working with a Republican Senate and White House, Waxman succeeded in enacting not only his Orphan Drug bill but also a landmark patent law — sponsored with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — which extended the protections sought by drugmakers but also opened the door more to lower cost generic alternatives.

This two-step pattern — first slowing his opponent’s momentum and then negotiating — was trademark Waxman.

The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments followed years of guerrilla tactics in which he stubbornly defied not just the Reagan White House but Dingell and the substantial Democratic labor allies behind the chairman at the time. Along the way, Waxman credits Republicans like former Rep. Marc Marks (R-Pa.) with casting key votes in committee to help him. And the final package passed by huge margins with Dingell’s help and President George H.W. Bush’s signature.

But nothing better illustrates Waxman’s craft, perhaps, than his piece-by-piece expansion of Medicaid for low-income mothers and their children under Reagan in the ’80s.

Since Medicaid’s enactment in 1965, eligibility had been linked to a household already receiving welfare under the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. But in a period of almost annual deficit-reduction bills in the ’80s, Waxman set about opening the door to allow coverage of pregnant women and young children — all low-income but not on welfare.

To keep down the costs and test political support at the state level, these changes were often voluntary at first. When states responded favorably, Waxman would come back a year or two later to make the coverage mandatory. Children born after September 1983 were phased in incrementally and became known in health policy circles as “the Waxman kids.”

It was not easy sledding. Waxman’s portion of the budget bills always seemed to be the last to settle, leaving the late House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) pacing and fuming. But Waxman would not have succeeded without help along the way from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, including Sen. Robert Dole, who had grown up poor himself in western Kansas.

“One time we would go into a conference and say the states may do something,” Waxman said. “And then the next time we’d come around and say a lot of states are doing it, others should do it as well. It wasn’t a one-day event or a one-year event. It was over many years. … We always looked for an opportunity to move a piece.”

Looking back, he said: “The legislative process is a dynamic one, and you have to look for people who are looking for opportunities to get things done.

“You have greater opportunities if you are in control. You have still greater opportunities if you are in control and have the votes. But if you are not in control and you don’t have the votes particularly, you look to see if you can develop a compromise on a broader range of issues that is a win-win for both sides.”

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), now Waxman’s chairman on Commerce, was not yet 30 and a legislative aide to then-Budget Director David Stockman back in those early years of the Reagan White House.

“Henry’s a smart guy,” Upton said. “We’re on different pages on different issues, for sure, but we have a pretty good personal relationship.”

“His moustache isn’t quite as thick in places as when he came,” Upton teased. “But he’s left a real mark on the institution.”